Hey big spender: Meeting a billionaire car collector

Still, I’ve not been invited to Kohli’s home to dwell on any of this, rather to hear about his cars. Before he will meet me, I must submit to a Covid-19 test (before I arrived, Kohli’s chauffeur scored a positive and was sent home). To my horror, I realise that I’m to perform it myself. An assistant hands me a probe in a sealed bag with instructions to open it and insert the slender device deep into each nostril, “up to the wide part or it won’t be effective”. I do as instructed, tears instantly pricking my eyes.

Fortunately, my suffering isn’t in vain. Within minutes, I’m given the all clear and Kohli, a trim-looking 63-year-old, appears, keen to talk cars. In fact, he had initially wanted to write a piece for Autocar comparing his Huayra and Veyron. But as we talk, it’s clear that the Pagani would have won.

“I love power and good looks, and the Huayra has both in abundance,” he says. In fact, I’m often in contact with the company’s directors – but then there are many car maker CEOs in the fraternity, so that’s not unusual. Like the rest of us, they just love to meet up and talk about cars.”

He wants me to see the Huayra, so we move from his vast conservatory, through his large den with a huge wall-mounted TV playing Formula 1 races on a loop and into the car tank. Kohli busies himself opening every door and cover of the seven-figure Italian hypercar, before inviting me to sit in the driver’s seat and start it.

Its owner beams as its Mercedes-AMG twin-turbocharged V12 roars into life. Kohli says he drives the Huayra only occasionally. Very occasionally, I think he means, since it has done less than 1000 miles. Indeed, his other exhibits in the tank have done only 2000 apiece. Does this lack of familiarity explain why he can’t tell me what the Huayra’s optional Pacchetto Tempesta package (£150,000) includes and is unsure which model the Ferrari is at the far end (he settles on a 456, but it’s actually a 430)? In fact, I suspect it’s because he’s a tad impulsive and simply buys the best that he can afford without worrying too much about the details.

Where does Kohli buy his cars? Not from dealers but at the Geneva motor show, apparently: “My wife and I fly there in my jet and stay for two days. All the CEOs know I’m coming. We meet and they tell me what’s new. I bought my Dawn at Geneva.”

Servicing them is a sore point, though. For example, his Veyron targa-top’s annual workshop bill is £25,000. “That’s bad enough, but Bugatti says I must replace the tyres every 12 months, and they cost £8000 each. I refuse,” Kohli says. In fact, the tyres are meant to be reglued to the wheels every 18 months and the wheels themselves replaced every three tyre changes, but he’s in no mood to quibble.

As for driving his supercars in the manner that their makers intended, Kohli says opportunities in the UK are non-existent (“I don’t want a ticket”), so instead he goes abroad, where he can drive his Ferrari and Lamborghinis on derestricted sections of autobahn or call in a favour within the fraternity to borrow a Bugatti for an unrestricted blat.